


Stray

by dareyoutoread



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Mad Max: Fury Road
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-04-01 11:03:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4017346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dareyoutoread/pseuds/dareyoutoread
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She leaves him supplies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stray

**Author's Note:**

  * For [abelard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/abelard/gifts).



> Kudos to the genius abelard, who started the conversation that inspired this little fic. Somehow we started talking about how Max is very much like a stray cat, and this idea grew from there. (Sorry, no actual cats in this fic.)

It starts simply enough. One night, the sentries tell her of a man skirting their borders, there and gone so quickly he might be a ghost. He never shoots at them, but neither will he get close enough to talk. Perhaps, they tell her, he simply wants to observe the Citadel’s workings from afar? To look upon the Green Place it is becoming? It is a sight unlike any other in the Wasteland, they remind her. After all, they say, he never shoots. 

But neither does he stay.

…

On the first day, she leaves food. Uses her own hands - flesh and metal - to pick the freshest tomatoes from the gardens. A few precious pea pods from the hydroponics grove. Bean-paste. She drives it out to the edge of their borders herself. No one ever sees the ghost-man, but the box is gone in the morning. And there are fresh tire tracks.

…

On the fifty-first day, she leaves guzzoline. Sixteen gallons, and she’s not going to haul it all the way out this time, so she drops it a little closer, within their borders but close enough to the edge she thinks he’ll take the risk. He does. The guzzoline is gone by morning. In its place is the box she’d used for the food. It’s full of ammunition, several dozen guns marked with the sigils of the Citadel’s various enemies. She loads them up, smiling, and tries not to hope she’s being watched.

…

On the seventy-eighth day, she leaves blankets. Just two of them, but from the Immortan’s old private stash. They’re thick and soft and not entirely stained with guzzoline and motor oil, and she thinks about a night many days ago looking out over the salt, wrapped in dark wool, and thinks maybe - maybe - her ghost will look out over the Citadel like that. One of her sentries reports a shadow moving through their territory that night, and in the morning, there are two empty guzzoline containers and a box of spare parts where the blankets were. 

She sorts through the parts and finds the ignition coil she’s been needing for the new war rig.

…

On the hundred and tenth day, she leaves clothes. Goggles, a thick pair of pieced-together canvas pants, a couple of shirts. Storms have been ripping through the valley more often of late, and though the Citadel is relatively well sheltered, the surrounding wastes are not. That night, it storms like hell fury, and in the morning, the clothes are gone, but it’s impossible to tell if they were taken by the storm or by the ghost.

She bets on the storm, for this time, there is nothing in their place.

…

On the two hundredth day, she leaves water, closer to the Citadel than she’s left anything, but she’s too caught up to leave it herself and she won’t risk any of her people on a supply run to a ghost. He must be desperate, though, because it’s gone before dark, and this time, her sentries catch a glimpse of his car as it roars away. Not a ghost, then, but she’s always known that. Not a ghost. Just a stray.

He leaves nothing that night, or the next morning, and she’s beginning to wonder if she has breached their unspoken agreement by forcing him too close to the Citadel. Forty-four days pass, and though she drops supplies several more times (on the far edge of the border this time; a peace offering), in the morning, they are still there. Another one hundred and forty-one days pass.

On the three hundred and eighty-fifth day, she stops leaving supplies.

...

On the morning of the four hundred and forty-ninth day, wrapped in two thick, familiar blankets, two young children stagger up to the gates of the Citadel. They can’t be more than four and six, and the youngest will not speak at all, but the eldest repeats, “The Fool. The Fool sent us. He said you would know.” 

She does. She's always known. Not ghost, not stray.

...

On day four hundred and fifty, she leaves a note. It’s tacked to an empty guzzoline canister next to a single flask of water. It reads, simply: “Fool. Come home.” 

In the morning, he is waiting at the gate.


End file.
